Throughout his political career, Eric Garcetti has spoken of his commitment to “smart growth” and sustainable development. In fact, in our recent LA Grows UP outreach, a listener who is concerned about overdevelopment in Hollywood, Matt Messbarger, responded by saying: “We hear about “Smart Growth” but the term has proven to be a meaningless placation device. Does Eric Garcetti live in one of these bland glass and steel high rises he touts so constantly? No, he doesn’t. He lives in a nice home on a tree lined street in Silver Lake.”

Well, actually Echo Park. And it so happens that DnA visited Eric and his wife Amy Wakeland– back in 2008 when the mayor-elect was working on Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign — in their “nice home,” an unshowy, hillside residence designed in the early 1950s by architect Daniel Dworsky. I wrote about it then for Dwell magazine and after describing the architectural and energy-saving features of their remodel, I asked them whether it would be, “even more sustainable to reside in a multifamily dwelling in Garcetti’s district or downtown and walk or bus to City Hall.” As reported then, both Garcetti and Wakeland said this is an issue with which they grapple.

“I would say that the truth is that everyone living in North America could be more green,” says Wakeland, “and it’s important that when people start doing this work they focus on what they can accomplish without getting too guilty. People need to feel like they are making positive contributions moving forward.” Pointing out that a public transit line is just three blocks from their house, Garcetti concludes: “I think L.A. offers a way to live with nature while living green so it doesn’t have to be either-or. I think we can live in harmony with both the city and the topography and lifestyle that has always defined Los Angeles.” Read more here.

MOCA’s A New Sculpturalism show stalled and restarted amidst a dispute over its curatorial direction. But it may also offer an exciting taste of the architecture of tomorrow. On this show, LA architects discuss why they don’t want to be “sculpturalists,” even as they showcase work in an art museum; and they give us a taste of the latest manifestation of LA’s long tradition of architectural experimentation. With Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Neil Denari, Christopher Mount, Christopher Hawthorne, Georgina Huljich, Marcelo Spina, Elena Manferdini, Benjamin Ball, Tom Wiscombe and Michael Webb.

Drama in the Making of A New Sculpturalism

A couple years back, MOCA brought in a visiting curator, Christopher Mount, to create a show of LA architecture dating back 25 years. The Getty Foundation granted the museum almost 450,000 dollars and he developed a show that he called A New Sculpturalism.

He brought in over 30 architects, including three he considered to be fathers of this “sculptural” approach – Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne and Eric Owen Moss. And in spring he published a catalogue, giving many participants a first-time look at what he had in mind.

At this point the framing of the show upset several of the architects, among them Frank Gehry, who did not like being categorized in what he called a “simplistic” way with many architects whose work he did not consider to be informed by the same concerns as his.

He pulled out of the exhibit in spring, and a flurry of press reports followed, declaring the show was in crisis. Preparations stalled for a while but after negotiations between the Getty, MOCA, Frank Gehry and some of the other architects, the exhibit got back on track, with revisions to the line-up of featured designers and to the installation design.

A Taste of the Future at A New Sculpturalism

Now a team is racing around the clock to revise the line-up and installation, in readiness for a June 16th opening, and the exhibit has the potential to be an exciting, if not by any means comprehensive, look at LA output in the last couple decades.

The exhibit will feature show models, sketches and photographs of buildings constructed by more than 30 of LA’s leading and lesser-known architects.

Knowing, however, that architecture is best experienced at human scale, MOCA also commissioned walk-in pavilions designed by younger architects — Elena Manferdini (whose candy-colored tilted cube with decorative reflective interior is shown in model form, above right); Georgina Hujlich and Marcelo Spina of the firm P-a-t-t-e-r-n-s (shown above left, looking at their pavilion design Textile Room, a structure wrapped in carbon fiber tape); and Tom Wiscombe, designer of “Surface-to-Volume,” an exploration of fiberglass as a structural skin (he is shown peeking through his model, below right).

In addition they asked Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues of Ball-Nogues to create an entranceway to the show (a project made largely of a jute mesh coated in hardened paper pulp “goo,” shown in the image at top). Having stopped work on the project when the exhibit stalled, Ball-Nogues may not be able to realize their concept in readiness for the opening, because the “goo” needs longer time to dry.

So the project may change. (DnA’s dream scenario is that it will be as much a happening as a piece of architecture, being built on site, to dry in front of people’s eyes, like the clay sculptures in the marvelous show by Urs Fischer and 1500 friends, left, currently at the MOCA Geffen.)

DnA visited each of the designers in their studios to get a sense of what they are building, and got a taste of the digital design and materials research that is driving some contemporary architecture.

Listen to the show and let us know what you think about the debate. Absurdly arcane? Or an important discussion about what unites and differentiates art and architecture?

The collapse of a factory in Bangladesh that killed at least 1,1000 people has raised questions about the role of the fashion industry in the working conditions found in countries like Bangladesh. Several companies including H&M, Carrefour, and Benetton have signed an international agreement that requires each signatory to help fund fire and building safety improvements in factories.

So we wanted to know, what does this mean for LA’s fashion industry? DnA’s Caroline Chamberlain called Ilse Metchek, President of the California Fashion Association.

Chamberlain: What are the implications of the Bangladesh building collapse for the LA fashion industry?

Metchek: Not a lot. The reason for that is that the LA fashion industry does not deal with large volume commodity products like Wal-Mart and Target. The LA design community relies on a higher priced market–merchandise that is not cheap. When buyers buy from Los Angeles, they are not buying merchandise that is cheaper than anywhere else. Our manufacturers for the most part do not work in Bangladesh.

C: Are people in the Los Angeles fashion community concerned about the ethics behind the clothing they produce?

M: Ethical practices is a subjective term. Nobody wants any picketing. They care because they are ever-watchful of being on a no-buy list. But it is a decision based on money. The word caring in the world of business is not an altruistic term. What do they care about? They care about their brand, their reputation, and their standing in the community. You do not want to be on that list of manufacturers who is found in a Bangladesh factory.

C: How has the design and fashion community in Los Angeles reacted to the building collapse in Bangladesh?

M: Just as any business community reacted. It was a terrible occurrence in the world. The building collapsed, that is very, very sad and it’s a reflection of the lack of concern of Bangladesh for its people. When it is apparel-specific then they immediately react and take a look at their supply chain.

But the ramifications have to be thought through. This is what happened to Cambodia and Myanmar 15 years ago. The practices in Bangladesh have been suspect. There are very clear rules for factories that began 15 years ago. Many of the major brands in the United States had very strict rules about sourcing and manufacturing. No matter what they [the United States manufacturers] did they [Cambodia and Myanmar] did not keep their promise. And that’s what’s going to happen with Bangladesh. In those countries, apparel manufacturing is probably the largest employer of people who would otherwise have no employment– and they will suffer. The owners of the factories and the owners of the buildings will suffer because they won’t get the business.

C: Is the international pact recently signed by many major retailers going to make a difference?

M: Surely it will. The reason Wal-Mart’s not signing on to that is because Wal-Mart will set its own rules. The lower you go in terms of pricing, they will need Bangladesh. The problem is the factories and how they are run. (See more on Wal-Mart’s solo plan in the New York Times)

C: What regulations apply to domestically manufactured products?

M: Domestic manufacturing has very clear restrictions and oversight. On wage an hour and AB633 a law that very clearly defines how a factory must operate in CA, and we are the only state that has those type of regulations. We as an industry, are much more highly regulated than any other state in the union.

For more of KCRW’s coverage on the implications of the collapse of the Bangladesh factory, listen to this To the Point; and read this NYT editorial for considerations before “you buy that T-shirt.”

After a few weeks of sturm and drang, MOCA’s “A New Sculpturalism” show is back on track, with a new opening date, announced Friday by the museum: “MOCA will present its exhibition on contemporary architecture from Southern California, A New Sculpturalism, opening June 16, 2013 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA as part of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.  The museum is excited to bring the architecture community in Los Angeles together in recognition of the world-class architecture that has been and continues to be conceived in the city by some of the most renowned and emerging firms and practitioners working today.”

Tuesday’s DnA will feature an in-depth look at what to expect from the show. We will hear about LA’s state of “perpetual innovation” and what it means for buildings of tomorrow, as well as the debate sparked by its curatorial direction and title, A New Sculpturalism, among a community that does not like to be reduced to an “ism” (with the exception of Modernism) or a group identity nor be misread as sculptors.

Tune in Tuesday at 2:30 to hear from Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Neil Denari, Christopher Mount and the next generation architects who are designing and building pavilions for the show — among them Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich of p-a-t-t-e-r-n-s, whose Textile Room, testing the potential of carbon fiber tape, is shown in model form, above; and Tom Wiscombe, who describes his design, shown in the rendering below, as “a study of surface-to-volume transformations, where mass is achieved by pushing into a surface like a fist through a rubber sheet.”

Wiscombe’s design is made of “composite monocoque construction with variable-depth honeycomb core,” it is being fabricated by Barnacle Brothers (heard on this DnA) and, like the other pavilions, is costing more than the stipend given the designers by MOCA and the Getty. So Wiscombe and P-a-t-t-e-r-n-s have both crowdsourced extra funds. P-a-t-t-e-r-n-s have reached their target; Wiscombe has until midnight Monday to reach his. If you’d like to be part of the process, support it here.

It’s a night for the marriage of architecture and opera. The Walt Disney Concert Hall will present tonight its first of four performances of  The Marriage of Figaro with sets designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, whose sketch is shown, left, and costumes by Azzedine Alaïa)

Meanwhile in Santa Monica, The Broad Stage and LA Opera have joined forces to co-produce the world premiere of Dulce Rosa, a modern opera by composer Lee Holdridge and librettist Richard Sparks, conducted by Plácido Domingo.

The opera is based on the Isabel Allende short story “Una Venganza” (“An Act of Vengeance”) and is described as a tale of “romance and ruin, of revenge and redemption set in a South American country in the early 1950s.” Its sets include projections of abstract architectural imagery (shown) by art photographer Jenny Okun. There are six performances, through June 9; tickets and information here. But don’t bring the kids: apparently it features — what opera doesn’t! – explicit rape and violent death.

Now the acoustic experience may be damaged, according to a recent study that found that deep down vibrations from passing trains in a nearby subway might affect recording quality.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, “Experts who know the hall’s acoustics are worried that the listening experience in the main auditorium could suffer when subway trains begin running 125 feet below the parking garage in 2020. . .

As part of our ongoing coverage of Pacific Standard Time Presents:Modern Architecture in L.A., we’ve talked about a show that looks not at individual buildings but a boulevard. It is called Windshield Perspective and it opens tonight with a party at A+D museum.

From Griffith Park, to Mulholland Drive, to its many miles of sunny beaches– Los Angeles is a place that attracts those in search of  a view. Windshield Perspective, an exhibit opening at the A+D museum, honors a view that is not mentioned in LA guidebooks, but is ubiquitous for Angelenos–the view through one’s windshield along a major boulevard.

Windshield Perspective, curated by Greg Goldin and designed by Andrew Byrom (who created the image above) narrows in on the stretch of Beverly Boulevard in Central LA from Normandie to Virgil, a distance that in no traffic (an imaginary concept), is a three minute ride. It documents all that lines this vital piece of the LA arteries, from oft-changing storefronts to street vendors to billboards. By removing the commute from its purely functional context, it allows us to focus on the elements of a typical piece of LA cityscape that are seen and obscured through the blurry “lens” of a windshield.

The exhibit will combine the visual re-creation of this drive with what the museum describes as an “immersive sound environment” in order to illuminate the chaotic and dynamic nature of the LA boulevard. For tickets and information, click here. For more on this exhibit, listen to an interview with Greg Goldin on this DnA.

In an age of complex digital design LA artists and architects are turning to specialty fabricators to build their concepts. Smilee Barnacle talks about “making” in LA’s new age of manufacturing. And Bobbye Tigerman looks back at a past community of makers and designers, profiled in her Handbook of California Design. Plus, DJ Waldie talks about how Angeleno-style mobility was off limits to him until the advent of rapid transit on “Iconic Wilshire Boulevard.”

Handbook of California Design

Bobbye Tigerman, left, co-curated California Design, 1930—1965: Living in a Modern Way, an exhibit shown last year at LACMA (see image above). The show was a hit – and the research produced so much rich history about designers and makers that the curators decided to create a book about them.

The result is A Handbook of California Design, 1930—1965: Craftspeople, Designers, Manufacturers, designed by Irma Boom (who happens not to be a California designer, and we’ll hear about that choice).

Bobbye talks about the community of designers that thrived in the Modern period, and the very special people she met during her research, like 106-year old emigre silversmith Victor Ries (shown right in photo courtesy of Noa Mohlabane).

She also considers the state of Southern California designing and making today. After being eclipsed for a while by Silicon Valley, she sees signs of a rebirth of a community of designers and makers. (Image left, DnA intern Caroline Chamberlain reads the handbook.)

“Making” in LA Today: Smilee Barnacle

Smilee Barnacle, aka Alessandro Thompson, is the founder of Barnacle Brothers, maker of one-off or short run sculptures and installations, in metal, foam, fiberglass, metal, stone and other materials for artists and architects including Allorra & Calzadilla (shown above, part of their Venice Bienale 2011 installation, Gloria, built by Barnacle Brothers), Shepard Fairey, Andrea Zittel, Mark Bradford, and architect Tom Wiscombe.

A graduate of Cal Arts, he is one of the pioneers of a kind of specialty manufacturing that has bloomed in recent years, as designers increasingly turn to fabricators to translate complex digital designs into physical reality.

DnA went to visit Smilee as he and his team at their El Sereno location as they worked on making the fiberglass shell of a design by architect Tom Wiscombe.

Smilee, who is a practising artist himself, talks about “making” in LA’s new age of manufacturing, and reflects on the impact of the computer on the tradition of crafting ones own artwork.

Iconic Wilshire Boulevard: DJ Waldie

For the past month on DnA we’ve been hearing stories about “Iconic Wilshire Boulevard.” This week poet and essayist DJ Waldie returns with a reminder that LA’s streets tell a different story when you cannot drive. As a non-driver, his life was transformed when rapid transit arrived on Wilshire Boulevard.

The history-rich scene show (and what is history really but the right now anyway) is guest curated by Sylvia Lavin, the high priestess of design gravitas, and it’s a doozy.

Prepare to be teleported as you dive in, your head fills with the Patti Smith, Ramones, Clash and silky putty Disco soundtrack that used to oil our lives. In defense of accuracy the show is really a look at what the MAK describes as ”the cross-pollination that took place between architects and artists in Los Angeles in the 1970s, a time when the autonomy of art forms yielded to convergences, collaborations, borrowings and more.” . .  and a swollen over decade that runs from the birth of psychedelia to the peak of punk, a time when Elvis was Nixon’s self appointed top narc, the best rock stars were dying off in huge numbers, the best films ever were being directed, and even Frank Gehry was a graffiti artist prowling the alley ways.

Exhibits of works and schemes by radical knife edge punk architects and designers are breathtaking for their all out nihilistic punk devastation end of world view. We’re talkin’ proto-subversive silvery shining and scribbled works by Gehry, Tom Mayne, Craig Hodgets, Peter Alexander and the like. The thing that jumps out at you, assuming you were even vaguely concious in that tumultuous time, is this was work dreamt up by rebels during the height of the cold war, a time when it was just as worthwhile to O-D on heroin as it was to devote oneself to designing things, making schemes for buildings and plans for cities, because all out nuclear holocaust was on the horizon every minute back then.

It was a time of pointlessness and decadence. The world was ending, why bother, pass the absinthe. So there’s Craig Hodgett’s heart-wrenching sci fi dystopic visionary designs for ‘Ecotopia,’ a proposal for a series of freeway ramps post nuke bomb incinerated, rebar-poking out ruins and craters–but if you study the drawings closely you find little connected strange telegraph wires to each torched ramp representing what, symbols of residual human intelligence and cockroach survivalist sense of humor: yes, we were a race that showed such promise, ah, the hardy little homo nuclearpithicus, what a species. Descendants of Chatterton and Oscar Wilde, no? Devoted to beauty and narcissism. Fix your hair, get out there and sparkle – Obey Beyonce. What made these quizzical creatures die out exactly? Anthropologists from another planet while wonder in the not to distant future; was it the love of their own death. Put the amps on 11, baby, and set the controls for the heart of Dr. Strangelove.

The event was glam; present were several of the designers abovementioned plus the merry pranksters of the art world Doug Chrismas and Jennifer Kellen, and architects Linda Taalman, Barbara Bestor, Hernan Diaz Alonzo, Florencia Pita and Andrea Lenardin, and children frolicking in the garden making giant 3-headed dinosaurs out of Jef Raskin’s 1970 geometrically intricate cardboard multi-studded cubes (called Bloxes, shown with Jef in the early 70s, top, and now, above). It’s a hands on scene, campers. Get down there fast as you can.

The exhibition features projects by Peter Alexander, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Archigram, Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, Denise Scott Brown, Judy Chicago, Peter de Bretteville, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Environmental Communications, Frank Gehry, Gruppo 9999, Victor Gruen, Craig Hodgetts, Andrew Holmes, Nancy Holt, Robert Irwin, Ray Kappe, Robert Kennard, Allan Kaprow, Ed Kienholz, Alison Knowles, Leonard Koren, L.A. Fine Arts Squad, Morphosis, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Peter Jon Pearce, Cesar Pelli, Jef Raskin, Ed Ruscha, SITE, Robert Smithson, Paolo Soleri, StudioWorks, Bernard Tschumi, Venturi & Rauch, and others.

The show is part of the Getty initiative, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A, and, according to the MAK center, is the only exhibition to explicitly connect the series’ current focus on architecture with last year’s emphasis on the other visual arts.

Maybe those flight delays might not be so miserable if you had a travel bag like this.

This year’s Celebrate Gala, a fundraiser for indie design museum A+D, explores the theme of travel — in style.  The museum invited artists and designers to remind us that travel was once equated with glamor and to come up with travel-inspired creations for auction. On show will be ”one-of-a-kind carry-ons – suitcases, vintage train cases, modern day satchels, futuristic jet-paks and more, designed by the likes of Karim Rashid, Steven Ehrlich (see his “Baguette” below), Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design, Cristobal Valecillos, BMW DesignworksUSA, Fentress, Frederick Fisher & Partners (see his design, above), Kathryn M. Ireland, Trip Haenisch, and Craig Hodgetts of Hodgetts + Fung. For tickets and information, click here.